| Set On Stun |

This year’s E3 in some part answered the question about whether gamers should be saving their money for a PS4 or an Xbox 720 anytime soon. With our current crop of consoles clearly hitting their stride in terms of content and quality combined with our current economic woes, investing a large chunk into developing new systems would be foolhardy.

Instead, the big three are doing all they can to upgrade their existing hardware. Nintendo’s top selling Wii Sports Resort introduced the motion plus controller which accentuates the current Wiimote to give it better control and precision. And much like they did last year, Microsoft tweaked their system once more adding some new features and upgrading some old ones.

What this basically means for 360 owners is they have more things to play with other than just games. Take for example the Netflix upgrade …

Now not only can you watch your Netflix instant cue through the Xbox 360 but you can also browse new movies to add and even start or join an Xbox Live party so you and your friend(s) can watch a movie together, talk and/or chat. In advance of the upcoming Facebook install they’ve talked about this feature enhances the console’s social media capability well beyond online gaming .

Games on demand lets you buy a copy of an Xbox 360 title online and download it to your console — nothing new there. The tweak is that you can then log into your XBL account from any console and play that same game — even if the console doesn’t have a hard disk. The concept hear is clear. You can be at your cousin’s house across the country and still play a game you own. As a bonus you can even delete the game and download it again for no extra charge (suck it Itunes). If that’s not enough you can even even view, download or print a game manual from xbox.com.

Probably the most useless of upgrades though would be the avatar marketplace. Very few were welcoming of this post-Wii adaptation when Microsoft first launched the avatar feature last year, but eventually people got used to it and have invested time in playing around with their avatars. Now comes the opportunity to spend your Microsoft points on buying more clothes and accessories for your avatar even to the point of having a whole theme from a popular game or show.

Currently available are things like Gears of War outfits, and bits from The Clone Wars like lightsabers and clone trooper outfits. Silly? Yes. But with more avatar-based games being developed gamers may want to drop a buck or two on some fancy gear to tool around online with. Plus it becomes a great tie in for future game releases who want to serve up avatar outfits as part of their DLC.

There are also some minor tweaks which while not a spectacular certainly are very useful with everything from account management to UI tweaking to enhanced system settings.

All in all this update once again retools the 360 so that gamers have even more features than they had before and brings the console  into a category that makes it more than just a machine to play games. And once again you’re dealing with a situation where it’s easier to gradually improve the existing console rather than build a new one. Whether or not this will help shape the creation of the next generation of consoles is unclear but it would seem those in the know are shining on more and more to creating that universal piece of hardware that plays great games and will also be a machine that can be adjusted and tweaked to serve as the ultimate entertainment device.

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